Memories Lost
by ellabellbee
Summary: "Shannon can't remember much from the day they got rescued." Written between seasons 1 and 2, before the island got crazy. Shannon deals with rescue, and leaving the memories of Boone behind. tw: depression, self-harm


**I'm finally archiving some of my fic here. Originally posted on LJ 2005-09-21. Written between seasons 1 and 2, before things on the island went completely crazy.**

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><p>Shannon can't remember much from the day they got rescued. She can remember in perfect detail the look on Sayid's face, the willingness for her to understand the implications of the radio interference and snatches of voices coming from the small speaker that he was able to salvage from Danielle's odds and ends. She remembers the planes flying overhead, and the splinters she got from gathering extra wood to make the fires bigger to attract more attention.<p>

She barely remembers the boat coming to save them, sailing in from the distance, because she focused on the smaller boat sent in the meet them.

"The boat, mama, it's a big boat!" While she doesn't remember the comments from the other survivors, the ring of Aaron's innocent voice floating to her ears she can play over and over again. Shannon hadn't heard that much laughing ever on the island, and she remembers dropping to her knees and crying for those that didn't make it to the rescue.

There isn't that much that she remembers. There are bits and pieces of scattered pictures, conversations and faded motions that cling to the subconscious of her memory - only coming out in dreams that disappear when she awakes.

They had to stay on that island one extra night, and they all took that time to say goodbye in their own special way. The campfire was built up bigger than ever before and they sat around it like war veterans - each with a story to tell, a scar to show and a moment in time when they realized they were family.

The people from the boat watched from the outside - some taking notes, and another taking pictures. Shannon had no doubt she would be on the cover of every international magazine and newspaper over the next week.

Shannon knows that at one point during the night they started leaving the campfire to take care of personal goodbyes. She doesn't remember the order but she remembers Kate's soft footprints leading away from the fire first, and that Hurley stayed until morning.

Shannon was one of the last to leave. Her brain was hazy and not for the first time she was having trouble making the thoughts process through her head. Boone told her once , when he was trying to make her feel particularly useless, that when the plane crashed she just stood on the beach and screamed. Shannon doesn't remember that either.

Though the specifics of that night are sketchy, she remembers the feeling of the ball drop in her stomach, her muscles tense, the bitter taste that entered her mouth and the explosion that happened in her head when she made a full sprint to the caves.

This island - this island was where Boone lived. When she couldn't sleep and hadn't eaten for days - that was when she talked to him and he answered back. The Boone that she knew there - there was where he had to stay. He couldn't come back with her to the mainland. She couldn't take him with her to the pain of the real world.

His clothing and belongings, the stuff that she had kept immaculate for so long needed to be with him. She remembers a photographer being at the caves at that time taking pictures of Boone's stuff, but she doesn't remember railing on him or pushing him to the ground. "You can't have him you can't have him you can't have him you can't have him he's better here stay stay stay stay..."

She doesn't remember him following her once she gathered Boone's belongings and made her way back to this grave. She doesn't remember him taking pictures as she laid his things around the simple stone that they used as a marker, but she does remember the pain. The tears. The shaking and the sobbing and crying until she had no more tears, and then crying again.

She has no idea how long she was there or at what time she fell asleep at, but when Sayid finally shook her awake, she still felt stuck between abandonment and freedom, unsure where to turn next. If Boone had spoken to her in her sleep, his voice vanished as quickly as the dream.

Most of her memories from that night come from the magazines. If it hadn't been for the two-page glossy spread of the Time "Survivors of Flight 815" issue of her laying beside the mound of earth with his stuff surrounding her, she would have been hard pressed to say out-loud that it had actually happened at all.

There were snippets of conversation that she had missed completely that had wound up broadcasted to the wold. There were quotations that came from her mouth that she has no recollection of saying, though the others reassure her that she was that nice, and the others really did think that well of her and Boone. She now kept all those magazines and newspapers in a box under her bed - close enough to reach in a moment's notice, but far enough away to keep away the searing pain.

Shannon doesn't remember much from the first week back either. They were all put up in a fancy hotel in Australia for the first month while Oceanic took statements. There were a number of legal issues that needed to be worked out that she doesn't pretend to understand, and there was a certain security of still being that close to the rest of the survivors.

There were all forced to go through psychological testing and counseling to help with the culture shock and things they had gone through on the island. "I'm not going," Shannon declared when Sun - the first victim of the shrinks - returned to the survivors that night.

Kate just stared at her from across the room with a combination of amusement and concern before simply replying, "go". So Shannon followed her orders and attended her analysis. After a few short sessions they diagnosed her with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, as they did half of the survivors.

She didn't tell them about Boone's visits to her, where they would converse for hours until someone else appeared and he went away - but then again, they never directly asked.

There were information sessions on what had happened in the world since they had left. There were more medical tests than she could think of or count, but Jack said they were all for good reason. They did the best they could to give the survivors a bit of peace - and it helped, it really did - but for some more than others.

Shannon has trouble remembering that part of her life, but she does remember the showers. She remembers getting to the hotel the first day and hearing Claire exclaim, "Shan, they have running water". She must have taken eight showers the first day. She would leave the water running before until the entire bathroom was filled with steam and she could write her and Boone's name in the water droplets on the mirror. She would let the scalding water rinse over her face, her hair and her body until her fingers went pruney and the heat began to fade. Then she would take the fluffy, clean white towel and surround her body while she stepped out of the bathroom into the much cooler bedroom. She had the heat lamp on constantly and never turned on the A/C, and when she was dry and the prunes disappeared she would do it again.

It was almost a week when she realized that the years of the sun-damage to her skin wouldn't allow the deep tan to fade.

The next day she bought a hard loofah and scrubbed as hard as she could to try and become light once more, but she only got dry skin.

The next day she scrubbed with a hairbrush.

One more sleep and she wore a long, loose linen pants and long sleeved cotton shirts during the day to hide the cuts and scars. She said it was because she was constantly cold. When Sun saw the raw skin between the bottom of her shirt and the gape of her pants, they brought her back in for more counseling and took away her razor.

Boone stopped talking to her then, afraid of what would happen to him if the shrinks found out.

She remembers the second night in the hotel following her nose to Hurley's room and finding a stack of pizza waiting for her and the rest of the group. She remembers laughing with Walt and Michael as the cheese slid between their pizza and caused a topping avalanche. She could remember the taste of the way the tomatoes burned the top of her mouth and the way she ate more that night than she sometimes did for entire weeks on the island. She also remembers the way the grease rushed through her and her body revolted from the at much foreign food at once. She remembers thinking again how good the rise of bile felt in her throat.

Two days after that Charlie was the one to notice the trend, and followed her into the washroom after every meal - females only be damned.

It was almost a week before they let them talk to the press. Something about legalities once again. There wasn't a lawyer on the island to explain it to her in a way that she'd understand, nor did she trust anyone from the world they were strangers to, so she just took it at face value.

Shannon never really wanted to talk to the press. Her transformation on the island was private. Wanting the press, the TV face time... that was the old Shannon. The new one wanted to be left alone.

It was a week before the let family in. Shannon doesn't remember much from that time either except for her stepmother showing up, mad that Shannon had lived while her stepbrother had not. The only reason she did show up was for the press, Shannon told Locke. He patted her arm awkwardly before wheeling away from the cameras himself.

She briefly remembers the news statement saying that the US courts were not going to charge Kate due to some technicality. "It's like 'time-served'" Kate replied jokingly.

Sayid responded, "I always knew that the island was a prison."

She barely remembers the goodbye - leaving the hotel to go back to America. She knew they all checked out on the same day, and none were going in the same direction. Most had families they wanted to see, some just wanted to see something familiar whether it be an old room, skyscraper or climbing tree.

She doesn't remember the flight back, but she was told later that somewhere over the pacific ocean she had started screaming and the crew had to restrain her and sedate her. Shannon didn't think that she'd be using many of the life time of free flights Oceanic gave her.

If it weren't for the magazines and taped news stories, knowledge of the the Arabic and Korean languages, and frequent phone calls from the other survivors, she could almost forget that it happened. The memories could fade and she would be left with only more forgotten dreams that tugged at her heart when she smelled a certain flower, the sun came from behind the clouds in just the right way, or her feet touched the sand of a playground sandbox.

Shannon doesn't remember when he started talking to her again, but it must have been almost a year after she got back to America. One day he just appeared, talking to her like he never left.

After some time - though she's not sure how much time - she bought another loofah. When her skin became red and raw, she ordered pizza.

Charlie was on tour and Sun was across the ocean. Kate didn't tell her to go to counseling.

This time, no one took away the hairbrush.

Their phone calls were becoming less frequent.

And no one took away the razor.

She had trouble remembering their voices anyhow.

But Boone was there, talking to her and listening when there was no one else. At least when she decided to talk.

When he didn't talk, she cried. When he was there, she hung on his every word.

So when he told her to press harder, she did.


End file.
